Deadspin editor Tommy Craggs knows his publication has stepped in it, metaphorically speaking, now that a story the website ran doubting Colorado GOP Senate’s Cory Gardner high school football career has been debunked.
The website hasn’t formally corrected or retracted the story and the reporter, Dave McKenna, stopped just short of saying it was wrong. Rather, he said: “If it was wrong, it’s my fault.” An update detailing the Gardner campaign’s rebuttal, which includes photos of the future congressman in uniform, has been added to the top of the post.
The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, who had already interviewed McKenna, also emailed with Craggs on Thursday.
“For now, I guess, we’re going to sit here, eat some s—, and endure our Maoist struggle session in penitent silence,” Craggs said when asked by Wemple if the site planned to do any more with the story. “Our main source decided to unsay everything he’d said 24 hours earlier. What else can we do?”
Chuck Pflamer, the former high school teacher who was quoted by Deadspin pretty definitively saying that “Cory Gardner wasn’t on the football team,” told the Denver Post that his comments had been mischaracterized. Deadspin said in its update to the story that Pflamer had “repeatedly said” that Gardner wasn’t on the team during a “lengthy conversation.”
Craggs also took the blame for the story in his exchange with Wemple.
“We thought we’d nailed it down. We had the team’s historian — the guy best equipped, after Gardner himself, to give us a definitive answer — telling us Gardner didn’t play,” he said. “If you’re looking for someone to blame here, blame me for getting way too cocky about my site’s ability to prove a negative.”
